Posts from April 2010

April 26, 2010

Last
Thursday a group of teachers and about forty eighth graders from Belle Chasse
Middle School (in Plaquemines Parish) visited me at Tulane. Everyone in their
grade had read RUINED, and students had to take a test and write a paper in
order to win a place on this field trip. In the morning they went on a tour of
Lafayette Cemetery in the Garden District, one of the key locations in the
novel, and then they sprawled on the lawn outside the Department of English,
eating their lunches. At noon we all crammed into the Media Lab in the English
department for a chat.

They were
delightful, of course, and I really enjoyed their visit. And big props to their
very creative and dedicated teachers for using the book as a starting point for
explorations of Louisiana social history. One teacher, Shelley McGar, wrote to
me before the field trip and said that after reading the novel they’d embarked
on “research and discussion about
burial practices, death photography, yellow fever, the slave revolt in Saint-Domingue
and the cultural influences of the refugees, voodoo and its incorporation
with Catholic practices, the plaçage system, Creoles versus
"Americans" in the New Orleans of the 1800s, among other topics.”

The field trip was organized by another
teacher, Zana Curley, who emailed me back in February to see if it was
possible. Zana was born in my hometown, Auckland. (New Zealanders infiltrate
everywhere: we’ll be in charge of all Louisiana soon.)

When the group was leaving to go back to
school, Zana handed me letters from a number of students. These letters
included several questions I don’t think we covered during our chat, so I told
her I’d post answers on this blog. Hopefully they’ll placate the other readers
who wander here from time to time, wanting answers about the book. Thanks so
much to all the students who came to visit me, and all those who wrote me
letters. I’m going to take the letters back to New Zealand with me in May to
show my family.

SPOILER
ALERT: people who haven’t
read RUINED yet should avoid reading these answers until they’ve finished the
story.

Keshawn:
Did Rebecca’s Dad reunite with his family? Did Rebecca move back to New York,
and how is Lisette in heaven?

Rebecca and her father go back to New York
together, but now they can come to New Orleans whenever they like, to see Aunt
Claudia and Aurelia (and Anton, of course). I think Rebecca’s father might even
buy a place there – maybe an apartment in the French Quarter. And I’m sure
Anton is planning a trip to NYC at some point. Lisette is reunited with her
mother, of course: she’s not condemned to haunting the cemetery and the Bowman
mansion anymore.

Justin:
Why didn’t Rebecca die instead of Helena?

Lisette saves her, just in time. And then
there’s the crumbling tomb … But it’s pretty touch-and-go for Rebecca for most
of that final showdown in the cemetery, as you’ll recall.

Devin:
Which school is Temple Mead supposed to represent? How did you come up with the
plot of the story? How long did it take you to get your book published?

I made up Temple Mead, though for its
exterior and location I was inspired by the beautiful main building of Louise
McGehee School in the Garden District. [Note to McGehee students: I know your
school is a much happier and more sensible place than Temple Mead! No slights
are intended.]

The plot of the novel came from lots of
different places – experience, invention, pieces of ideas, other people’s
stories, notions, questions, images, my interest in Louisiana history, my
interest in cities, the characters that began to form in my head … Everything
started coming together at some point, and I realized it could be a novel.

The first pieces started clicking together
early in 2006, I guess, and I delivered the final draft to Scholastic in
December 2008. So – almost two years of work, with another eight months work on
the publisher’s side before it was in book stores.

Madison:
Why did you name the book RUINED? Why did Lisette’s father want her to take
care of him when he had yellow fever?

I had a notion of New Orleans as a city in
ruins after Katrina – or at least somewhere that was seen that way by other
people. And a key part of the curse is that a house will lie in ruins at the
end, and that does happen when the Bowman mansion burns to the ground.

Lisette’s father loved her very much and
wanted to see her again before he died. And people didn’t understand the causes
of yellow fever then: he may have thought she was immune. He didn’t think she’d
be in danger – not of catching yellow fever, and certainly not of getting
murdered.

Jacob: Why did you choose New Orleans as
the setting for this novel? What is your favorite cemetery to visit, and why?

I’ve lived
in New Orleans since the summer of 2004, but I’ve been interested in it and
writing about it for much longer. (It’s a location in my first novel, Queen of Beauty.) One of the seeds for
this book, specifically, was a night-time carnival parade; another was learning
about voodoo in New Orleans; another was exploring the Treme neighborhood for
the first time. New Orleans is swarming with stories, as you know. Swarming
with ghosts.

Cemeteries I
like very much, wherever they are. My family went on holiday to Norfolk Island
when I was a teenager and I made two visits to the old cemetery there to
explore. (There are lots of Mutiny-on-the-Bounty connections.) Oddly, the only
cemetery I’ve toured in New Orleans is Lafayette, which is by no means the
oldest one in the city. I think I was intrigued by it because I drive past so
often: I started thinking about what might be going on behind those high white
walls. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived for a short time in New Orleans, and the house
where he stayed overlooks the cemetery.

I’m always
on the hunt for graves of writers, musicians, artists and adventurers I like –
Kate Chopin and Tennessee Williams in St Louis; Anne Bronte in Scarborough,
England; Charlie Parker outside Kansas City. On ‘Authors Ridge’ in the cemetery
in Concord, Massachusetts: Thoreau, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Louisa May Alcott
and her family. Laura Ingalls Wilder in Mansfield, Missouri. Oscar Wilde in
Paris. Robert Johnson outside Greenwood, Mississippi – probably his real grave.
Billy the Kid in New Mexico – probably NOT his real grave. Jane Austen in
Winchester Cathedral. George Armstrong Custer at West Point. (A disclaimer: I
know Custer was crazy and awful, but after I read the fantastic Son of the Morning Star by Evan Connell,
I was obsessed with him for a while. Good books can turn your head.)

Mitchell
and Seth: Are you going to come out with a sequel?

I’m working on a second book in a ‘haunted
city’ series right now, but it takes place somewhere else. Mitchell suggested
New York, which is a good idea, but at the moment I’m writing something set in
old York – in England – which is the most haunted city in the world. [Note:
Mitchell told me I should NOT call any sequel RUINED 2, and I will take his
advice.] You know, I may write a sequel to RUINED at some point … never say
never!

Thanks again to all the eighth-graders from
Belle Chasse Middle School (and teachers) for your enthusiasm, ideas and
encouragement. I really enjoyed your visit.